Three Count | Happy Letterer Appreciation Day!

Three Count spotlights, as the title suggests, three things from comics today. And today is Letterer Appreciation Day, so make a big sound effect for your favorite letterer.

So what is a “letterer,” exactly? The person who fills the word balloons on a comic page? The designer of those great sound effects you see in an image? The saint making all those foreign language comics available to us in English? “One of the two most unheralded jobs in comics“? “The inkers for the writers“?

Maybe it’s all of the above. I also like this description from a Marvel.com article by Meagan Damore: “…letterers are the graphic artists who take the writer’s words and add them to the artwork, but their job extends beyond the simple transfer from script to the published page. Letterers also control pacing, convey emphasis, create sound effects, distinguish spoken words from thoughts and so much more.” Most modern comics are created collaboratively, and letterers are an important piece of the puzzle, bringing together the words and the art in a way that doesn’t hamper or overpower either. Quite frankly, you couldn’t have comics without them (except G.I. Joe #21, and even then, who added the title and credits to that first page, hmmm?).

So in appreciation of letterers, here are three things to know, follow and watch on Letterer Appreciation Day:

1. To know: Letterer Appreciation Day falls on Gaspar Saladino’s birthday

According to lettering living legend Todd Klein, Gaspar Saladino is “one of the greatest comics letterers of all time.” Saladino worked in the comics industry for about 60 years, lettering comics like Romance Trail, Strange Adventures, Mystery in Space, Justice League of America, The Flash, Showcase, Iron Man, The Avengers, Tales to Astonish, Superman vs. the Amazing Spider-Man and many more.

“When DC and Marvel pitted their top characters against each other in a 1976 one-shot, who better to letter it than Gaspar?” Klein wrote on his blog. “He told me he liked lettering this and other oversized comics being put out by both companies at the time in what they called tabloid size, about 10 by 13 inches. The art was drawn larger, and the extra space gave Gaspar more room to be creative. Perhaps the best of them was Superman vs. Muhammad Ali with amazing art by Neal Adams and Dick Giordano and equally amazing lettering by Gaspar. I started working in DC’s production department in 1977, and one of my first jobs was doing corrections and production work on that book. I couldn’t believe how excellent it all was! I’d been a comics reader and fan for many years, but the original art was much more impressive than the printed comics. Letterers had recently begun getting printed credit at DC around that time, and I and the rest of the comics world was learning the name Gaspar (he often used just his first name in credits) and came to appreciate his talent.” 

For DC, he became their in-house go-to letterer for logos, house ads and cover lettering. He created iconic logos for Swamp Thing, Vigilante, Phantom Stranger, Metal Men, Adam Strange, House of Mystery, House of Secrets, Unknown Soldier and more, as well as for Marvel titles like Avengers, Conan the Barbarian, and Sgt. Fury and his Howling Commandos, among others

Saladino passed away in 2016, leaving behind a legacy of what it meant to be a letterer and elevating it as an art form. Over the years Klein has done numerous posts about his mentor and friend, which you can find linked at the bottom of this post.

2. To Read and Follow: Nate Piekos of Blambot

Nate Piekos is not only an award-winning designer and letterer whose work spans Marvel Comics, DC Comics, Dark Horse Comics, Image Comics and more, but he’s also the author of The Essential Guide to Comic Book Lettering. As Augie De Blieck Jr. said in his review, this is “the Bible of comic book lettering,” offering a how-to manual for letterers new and experienced. I’d add that if you’re looking to work on comics at all, as a writer, artist, editor, etc. it’s a handy guide to have just to inform your own work.

Piekos didn’t just write a book on lettering; he’s also actively sharing tips and tricks on the Blambot website and on social media. Things like this:

If you’re interested in learning about lettering on an ongoing basis, follow Piekos on social media — here’s his Blue Sky account, which I like to recommend these days over whatever’s become of Twitter these days.

3. To Watch: KPBS feature on artist and letterer Stan Sakai

In honor of Letterer Appreciation Day, San Diego-based KPBS did a feature on Stan Sakai, award-winning creator of Usagi Yojimbo and letterer of Groo the Wanderer. Sakai’s career in comic started as a letterer; he was teaching calligraphy when Sergio Aragones recruited him to letter Groo. From there, he went on to create his own comics, and the rest is history. He still letters Groo as well as his own works, and he does it by hand.

“I do everything the old-fashioned way,” Sakai told KPBS. “I love the craft of creating comics. I do the writing, I do the penciling, and I do the inking, lettering, physically on paper rather than on the computer. This is something I really enjoy. I love the feel of the Bristol board, and it connects me to the artwork, and it brings more of my personality into the art. Most of my sound effects for Usagi is done with a brush to denote the Japanese style of brush calligraphy.”

You can read their entire article here.

The hero image for this post is from Death of the Inhumans #2 by letterer Clayton Cowles, artist Ariel Olivetti and colorist Jordie Bellaire